“Dirty Dozen” Tax Scams of This Tax Season
Just like the change of the seasons and the robins returning in the spring, tax scam artists return every year. And this year, the old tax scam standbys return, and bring with them some new wrinkles.
Among those wrinkles, for example, are two people working together and using the phone to get personal information from taxpayers so that they can then file a false return. They do this by first calling the victim and pretending they’re the IRS, and threatening people with fines, jail time, revocation of their driver’s license, garnishments, etc. Then, the first person hangs up, and another person calls back the victim, pretending to be the police or the DMV or the county tax assessor, gets even more information from the victim, and proceeds to file a fake claim.
This is just one of a dozen prevalent scams being worked on unsuspecting taxpayers right now. For the full list, visit the IRS and click on the tab “Identity Theft”.
And if you think someone’s trying to steal your identity to file a false tax return, or cheat you out of your return, call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1-800-366-4484.
And be careful out there…
My sister went to a “tax preparer” two years ago who charged her $820 for her return, but got her a refund of of over $4000. But the deductions weren’t legal and she got in a lot of trouble with the IRS and state of Va, and had to pay fines and late fees and it was a terrible mess. It’s still following her around. The person she went to was just taking people’s money, overcharging them by promising the “maximum refund”, and then getting the big refunds by claiming illegal deductions.
Good information, thank you. Think I’ll just do mine online.
I went to a chain tax return place the past two years, and they didn’t charge much, but then I had my new guy look at the previous years and the people at Jackson Hewitt missed one big deduction. so we did an amended return for both years and I’m getting back pretty good money. So the opposite thing happened with me.
I didn’t know this was such a problem. I’ve never known anyone this has happened to, I guess the people I know have been lucky.
if you get a tax form and booklet of instructions in the mail, it is best to use the sticker that shows your name and address that comes with your packet. The optical readers at the IRS will be able to process your return a bit quicker (maybe a day or two) than if you don’t.
The world is filled up with scammers!